Blobs of glup

When I was about 14, one of my favorite books was The Thirteen Clocks. It was by James Thurber and was, predictably, sort of a spoof of fairy tales. But I loved it for its language play. Ever since, I’ve remembered the phrase describing a slimy, not-so-ferocious monster as “a blob of glup.” We found lots of non-monstrous blobs on the beach this week.

Jellyfish. We saw one badly dried out Portugese Man o’ War and a few cannonball jellies. Since a violent wind storm the other night, the beach has been littered with the poor cannonballs. They’re quite beautiful, especially when they’re glistening wet and the sun is on them.

The same storm put some sea nettles on the beach. We’ve read that they can give you a nasty sting, but they’re handsome critters.

Then there are these things. They seem to glom onto anything hard: we found them attached to hunks of broken horseshoe crab shells, sticks, whatever. They soft, and remind us of sea anemones minus the tentacles, but who knows? If you do, please tell!

Today on a different beach, we found all kinds of funny things: 1/4-inch worms that squirt seawater, the siphons of some sort of equally teensy clam, and my current favorite sea creature, the decorator worm. It thinks it's camoflaged itself by cementing random bits of shell, sticks, seaweed, and even leaves, to itself. Somewhere in there is a tube that collects food when the tide covers the worm.

Well, maybe the decorator worm isn't my favorite, but only a close second to the parchment worm, but that's another story for another day.